


Rough Road Ahead

by subobscura



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, Dialogue driven, Gen, Mulder's past, Post-Syzygy, Professionalism, Season 3 Weirdness, partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2015-03-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:11:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3543905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subobscura/pseuds/subobscura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A direct continuation of the last scene in Syzygy, Mulder reaches his tolerance level for being a brilliant, misunderstood genius, and throws Scully a clue. Albeit against his better judgment. Trigger warning: discussions of sexual assault, though all in the past, not gratuitously, and not in any graphic detail.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rough Road Ahead

Rough Road Ahead

Anger still shimmered in the car like heat radiating off a summer sidewalk. It burrowed under Mulder's skin, left him itching and restless. He could blame planetary alignments all he wanted, but that was crap. He'd been not-himself, a sort of bemused haze falling over his perceptions. But the anger, the hot rage that had started as a small spark in the back of his mind, was feeding into a backdraft that had the potential to erupt into a white incendiary conflagration. That had started with Scully, and only grew in intensity even as the planets drifted further apart.

He concentrated on regulating his breathing, putting on his flattest most professional affect. Nothing to see here folks, just Special Agent Doctor Fox Mulder, paging through an uninspired issue of Experimental Psychology. Scully sighed from the driver's seat. She had a migraine she wasn't admitting to, and the glare of oncoming headlights was making it worse. Normally, Mulder would have gracefully offered to take over so she could sleep, but not tonight. She wanted to drive so bad, she could just fucking drive then. Comity had fucked everything up, but Mulder was beginning to think she'd tapped into something that had been simmering for a long time.

"So," Scully said in that particularly condescending sarcasm that he absolutely loathed. "Did you have time to wrap things up with Detective Blondie? Any plans to meet up in the near future?"

White. Then red, blood red, and he actually felt a strange twinge in his brain as his blood pressure went to hypertensive in a matter of seconds. "Stop. The fucking. Car. Right fucking now," he said, an audible tremor in his voice.

"Mulder," she cried, high and sharp. "We're in the middle of nowhere, and we've got..."

"NOW SCULLY," he yelled in the same voice he told suspects to drop their weapons and get on their fucking knees, digging his fingers into his hair and squeezing his hands against his scalp. He tried to will his fury into something manageable, but it had slipped his normally steel-trap control.

Startled, she automatically complied, slowing the car and crunching onto the gravel shoulder. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket, thumbing the display to check for bars. The face glowed green in the otherwise pitch black. "Wonderful. No service."

"What the hell, Mulder?! Why are we stopped? And who the hell do you think you're calling at two in the morning?" Her voice was strident and annoyed, and he just could not even.

He growled. "Well, under ideal circumstances I would have called a cab or a rental agency. But because I'm me, and this is hell, I'm stuck with you, like some French existentialist play. I think I'm still gonna walk out that door and fucking hitch a ride to the next shithole. I'm ready to risk a personal re-enactment of Deliverance, if it means getting out of this car and please God away from you for an extended period of time. I'm armed. It should be fine." Calm? What was calm? His brain-to-mouth filters also had apparently failed like weakened levees in a flood.

She stared at him, her mouth open and her eyes as wide as saucers. Incipient hurt was starting to creep into her features, but oh no. Not this time. He might make an excellent whipping boy, and was usually game to play the part, but he was done with this shit.

His hands shook as he turned off his tiny reading light. He scrubbed under his glasses with his fingers, then pulled them off and threw them on the dash with a loud crack. The car filled with the sound of the whoosh of the anemic heater and the click of the hazards.

"Mulder," she said in a more conciliatory tone, reaching over to touch his arm. He flinched away towards the passenger door and held up a finger.

"No," he said, his tone flat. "We're not doing that 'Oh Mulder Oh Scully, plaster over everything and call it good this time,' crap."

He crossed his arms and turned to stare straight ahead. He didn't know what the hell to do, and that scared him, control freak that he was. Unpalatable as it was, he was going to have to get real with Scully. And then pull rank, in an obvious, heavy-handed kind of way, which was just *weird* having to do it with Scully of all people.

"Dana," he sighed. "I don't know what the hell to do with you, I really don't." There was an audible gasp from his left.

Her voice quivered when she said, "maybe we should table this until we've had more sleep, gotten back to D.C...."

"No," Mulder drawled. "We're doing this. And then we're going to ignore each other for the rest of the trip, take a three day weekend during which we will not talk to each other unless we get called out, and come back in on Monday and never speak of this again." He nodded to himself. Good plan.

"Scully," he asked, turning to look at her in the pale glow of the dashboard lights. She looked a little green around the edges. Sorry partner, he thought. I'm done pulling punches. "What do you know about me, outside the context of my being your FBI partner? Other than the whole Samantha thing," he gestured vaguely with his hand. "And the odd biographical stuff you've picked up here and there." She opened her mouth to respond, but he cut her off. "No that was rhetorical. Jackshit is the answer you're looking for." He stared at her, feeling ruthless and cold and hard and remote. "You don't know the first thing about me, by design by the way, so please for the love of all that is unholy, stop making fucking assumptions about me."

"Well whose fault is that," she flared, ready to launch into battle.

"Shut. Up," he ground out. "I'm talking, you're listening." His heart was beating so fast, he could feel his pulse fluttering in his neck. He stared straight ahead, needing distance for this next part. "People who don't talk about their pasts usually don't because it's a terribly unhappy place to visit. I'm not an exception to that rule." The muscle in his jaw jumped with coiled tension. "I also don't like big dramatic revelations because they're emotional blackmail. And frankly in this instance, I fucking deserve my privacy. But I don't know how else to correct this fundamental misconception you have of me as some kind of irresponsible misogynistic asshole." He turned to stare hard at his partner. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"I was gang raped in university. More than once. Actually, I think." He stopped to consider. "Seven times all told." He was dry-eyed. He wasn't some fragile flower, and the crying was done. Oceans of tears separated him from that time, but he kept those nightmares locked in the deepest, darkest parts of himself.

Scully blanched white, her hand covering her mouth. "Who," she asked, a tear slipping free without her seeming to notice.

"Phoebe," he stated, grim. "She liked to drug me, and share me among our friends without my consent. After the first time, I was very fucked up. And I was living in a foreign country with no legal recourse, because I wasn't a citizen and she was rich. And not like I'm rich. I'm talking fabulously wealthy and connected. MP's and House of Lords, all the way up to Downing Street. I couldn't get away." He laughed, a dry harsh cough. "Well, I could have gone back to the States, back to my parents, but that's an entirely different campfire tale." He was rigid with tension. He felt like he was flaying himself open, like he was one of her cadavers.

"What happened next," she asked, using her soft, traumatized-victim interrogation voice. There was no need. This was a voluntary confession.

"She lost interest. And Professor Ganz." Mulder smiled, genuinely happy to think of his old mentor. "He was my music appreciation lecturer. He noticed my grades slipping, and took me to his house for a cuppa and a chat. He was the first person who cared, who even asked. I told him everything, because I just needed to tell someone. And he and his wife, God, they're such amazing people. They rescued me, let me live in their attic while I was finishing up my graduate degree." He laughed. "Josef always complains to this day that I have a tin ear, just because I don't have perfect pitch. Such a snob," he smiled fondly. "They're like family to me, him and Jane."

He sobered. Time to bring it back around to the point. "Sexually aggressive women scare the shit out of me, Scully," he said, looking at her again. She was watching him with her big, sober blue eyes. "My wife during my first three years at the Bureau wasn't very understanding of that. I had a lot of required therapy as part of getting my Ph.D., so I was genuinely doing pretty well. But."

"You hunt rapists for a living. That's horrible, Mulder. How can you stand it?" Her voice was choked with tears.

"Among many monsters," he nodded. "I did a lot of reading in an academic context to try and understand what had happened to me. I know these people from the inside out. I will never not feel filthy at some level for what they did to me. But there's no one more capable of or qualified to catch them than me. And it's a fucking travesty of justice that she's at Scotland Yard," he said, bitter and angry. "An ocean isn't far enough." He shook his head. "It'll all catch up to her one day. Her connections won't protect her forever."

"You almost went back to her," Scully cried, angry and dismayed.

"Such is her power," Mulder agreed. "Look," he sighed. "I'm not claiming full emotional healing. I'm fairly high functioning when it comes to being an adult. I have a job I'm good at, I feed and dress myself. I work out, but probably too much. But everything else?" He shook his head. "I don't date for the most part. I can't maintain intimate relationships. I don't have sex. The last time was a year and a half ago, and it was self-destructive in the extreme. I have a porn addiction, because it's far more non-threatening than promiscuity or casual sex, and it's nice to remember I have a dick," he said sarcastically. "I'm half a person," he finished, slumping back into his seat. He rolled his head toward Scully.

"What you walked in on. Detective White assaulted me after I told her no, and I was actually trying to get her off me without resorting to violence, though that was next." Scully's cheeks were burning with embarrassment. Good, he thought. She really, really didn't know everything, and a little humility might go a long way right about now.

"Scully, whatever you're seeing, whatever is driving this rude, aggressive behavior towards me? I am being completely serious when I say it has to stop. It's beneath you and it's very unfair to me."

She tilted her face down and clasped her hands in her lap, before looking back up at him. "Mulder, I am so sorry," she said. "Both for my behavior and for putting you in a position where you felt you had to share something that you obviously wanted to keep private."

"No one at the Bureau knows," he said. "For obvious reasons, the G-league not being recognized for its forward-thinking, progressive nature. The FBI's rape statistics only expanded to include men three years ago. Now you know. But it stops with you, Scully. No Karen Koseff, no reveals to Skinner for my own good. I'm dealing in my own way, and I don't want my employer to know. Period." She nodded, her chin quivering.

He sighed again. "I hate pulling rank on you, Scully. I do. I know I'm hard on you, and a demanding bastard, but I've never been the kind of person who likes all these power structures and hierarchies. And I know this was a weird case with unusual forces at play." He paused to make sure she was following him. "But if you ever bawl me out like that and undercut my professionalism in front of another investigator again, I will have your ass transferred so fast you won't know what's happened before it's done. I'll go to Matheson to make it happen. I take a lot of abusive shit from a lot of people, but I won't tolerate it from my partner. And I really won't tolerate it when it effectively destroys any authority I have to run an investigation." She was staring straight ahead through the windshield, taking her censure like the good soldier she was.

He reached over and rested his hand over her fist, clenched in her lap. "Scully, I value what you bring to the X-Files. I know you don't think so, but I really do. And after everything you've sacrificed, you have just as much right to be in this division as I do. I know you have your own truths to find and battles to fight." She nodded, a tear slipping down her cheek. She pressed her other hand over his. "We can disagree loudly, until we're blue in the face. But I put my heart and soul into getting this project off the ground, and the work will always come first. I'm not sure we're in a place right now where we even like each other, but that's still irrelevant. I've known partners who hated each other's guts, but they still had each other's backs in the ways that mattered. I'm a possessive bastard when it comes to the X-Files. I'd rather work with you, but if I have to fight you for them, I will." Something unwound in his chest. He was a fighter, a survivor. He could go it alone if he had to. But he loved Scully even when he hated her, and he'd much rather have her with him.

She looked at him. "Yes," she said, low and fierce. "We're partners, Mulder, and I still wouldn't change that for the world."

"Good," he smiled. "We'll be alright. You'll see. We're having a rough patch, but that's normal in longstanding partnerships like ours." He pulled back and stretched, the tension falling out of his shoulders, leaving him feeling relaxed but awake. He was ready for some quiet music on the radio and the miles ticking away under their tires.

"Switch," he said, unbuckling his seat belt and opening the door. "Don't act like you haven't been nursing a migraine for the last thirty mile markers."

"Thanks, Mulder," she smiled tiredly at him over the top of the car. He shrugged. "And thanks for opening yourself up a bit to me. I know that was difficult for you, but I feel like I understand a little more of where you're coming from. It helped."

He waved her off. "I'm still allergic to personal conversations or serious discussion not couched in seventeen layers of metaphor. This changes nothing," he sniffed.

She laughed then, bright and happy and tossed him the keys. "I'd think you were replaced by a pod person," she mock shuddered. "I think I saw a sign for a 24 hour Shake Shack in fifty miles," she grinned. They traded places, adjusting their seats forward and back.

"Well what the hell are we waiting around here for," he exclaimed in mock dismay. He turned the car back on with a flourish and pulled up onto the road, his left hand on the wheel and his right arm slung around his partner. Smooth sailing from here, he thought. At least until next time.


End file.
